Biographie de Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) is often regarded as the greatest of English women novelists on the strength of her six completed novels. Noted particularly for their sparkling social comedy and accurate vision of human relationships, they are still as widely read today as they have ever been. The seventh child of a country parson, Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon in Hampshire. Her father, the Reverend George Austen, was an intelligent and sensitive man who encouraged Jane in her love of reading.
From an early age she was familiar with the works of Henry Fielding, Sir Walter Scott, Richardson, Frances Burney and the poet George Crabbe. Her early attempts at writing include burlesques of popular romances. When her father retired in 1801 the family moved to Bath, which was later to feature in her novel Northanger Abbey (published posthumously in 1818). After his death in 1805 the family moved first to Southampton and then in 1809 to Chawton in Hampshire, where Jane Austen is known to have written her last three novels, Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816) and Persuasion (also published posthumously in 1818).
Although her other novels were written considerably earlier, it was not until 1811 that Sense and Sensibility was first published. Pride and Prejudice, which followed in 1813, features Jane Austen's own favourite heroine, Elizabeth Bennet. Surrounded by her lively and affectionate family and wholly immersed in her writing and domestic chores, Jane Austen led a life often noted for its lack of events.
She did, however, attract several suitors and even accepted a proposal of marriage from one admirer - only to change her mind the following morning. Jane Austen's self-contained life often seems reflected in her novels, which, peopled as they are by impoverished clerical families, eligible country squires, foolish snobs and husband-hunting women, seem to portray the world in miniature. Sir Walter Scott praised Jane Austen for that exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, while Somerset Maugham claimed that she had at her command the most precious gift a novelist can possess, that of keeping the reader's interest, Jane Austen died in 1817.
Persuasion, the last novel that Jane Austen completed, was published posthumously along with Northanger Abbey in 1818. While the zone is thought to be more serious than in some of her earlier works - perhaps a reflection of her own maturity - her use of satire and sense of the ridiculous remain as sharp as ever. Readers may also find the following books of interest: James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870; ed.
R. W. Chapman, 1926); Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975); Lord David Cecil, A Portrait of Jane Austen (1978); J. D. Grey, A Jane Austen Handbook (1986); John Halperin (ed.), Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays (1975); John Halperin, The Life of Jane Austen (1984); Park Honan, , Jane Austen: Her Life (1987); B. C. Southam (ed.), Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage (1987); and Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (1986).
